WHILE TORTUROUS, “TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE” CONTAINS VALUABLE INFORMATION

Alex Gibney’s documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” offers a depressing and one-sided look at the alleged torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The documents exposed and the interviews with soldiers in this film are very informative and interesting, but Gibney took it too far.
The documentary attempts to center around the story of Dilawar, a young Afghanistan taxi driver who was picked up and taken to Bagram Air Base, where he was found dead in his cell five days after his arrival. This heartbreaking story is unfortunately lost in the mass of horrifying pictures and video clips that Gibney puts into his movie. After beginning with a brief interview of Dilawar’s family, the film quickly moves on to the shocking torture techniques used at Bagram and then Abu Ghraib and eventually Guantanamo Bay.
The research that went into producing this movie had to have been a massive undertaking and, in that respect, “Taxi to the Dark Side” is well deserving of its many awards. The Oscar for Best Documentary, however, illustrates just how liberal the Hollywood society really is. “Taxi to the Dark Side” makes no attempt at defending any of the actions of soldiers or policy-makers in the post 9/11 world.
While “Taxi to the Dark Side” provides important information in a very convincing manner, these accusations should not be accepted or believed without any doubt or reservations. Gibney looks at only one side of these issues and, while no torture should ever be allowed by US policy-makers, certain techniques used and discussed in the movie are not typically considered to be torture and are lumped in with things like waterboarding and sexual assault.
The use of female interrogators, for instance, is not torture; it is simply using these detainees’ culture for our own benefit. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with allowing dogs to bark and growl at prisoners as long as no physical harm is done. The way that Gibney lumps things like these in with physical beating, sleep deprivation, and other terrifying torture tactics is uncalled for and poorly thought out on his part because it detracts from the horrors that are happening.
A disappointing part of this documentary is the ominous soundtrack that creeps into your senses throughout the movie and the use of lighting on the soldiers in their interviews. Despite the fact that these soldiers are undoubtedly being interviewed in what could be a well-lit room, they use only a single light and their faces seem to fade into the black background in what can only be read as an attempt to make them seem evil. Another trick that is utilized in the film is a negative filter on documents, making them mostly black and having white or gray type. All of these things combine to create an evil and menacing air throughout the film. If this is what Gibney set out to do, he did a extraordinary job.
“Taxi to the Dark Side” is a worthwhile documentary and Alex Gibney certainly deserves some of the awards he received for the film. It cannot be stressed enough though that this is one of those things where one should think back to their childhood and remember what was inevitably advised by a wise elder, “don’t believe everything you hear.”